·˚ ༘₊· ͟͟͞͞꒰➳
ೄྀ⊹୧: 𝓫𝓪𝓷𝓪𝓵 𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂←
«────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ──────»
✑ y/n pov
-
"It must've been hard for you to have to be cold to Eiji." We turned around and looked at Max. "You're heading back to New York, huh?" He asked, taking the bottle of alcohol and pouring himself a glass, finishing the bottle before I could even have another glass. "That's why you want Eiji to leave, huh?"
"It's just too dangerous," Ash explained.
"You'll be killed if you go back."
"He has a chance of being killed anywhere," I said as I raised an eyebrow.
"She's right. It's the same here. His men will find us. New York might be Dino's home ground, but it's mine too."
"You're still going to confront him?" Max asked.
"I can't stand hiding from him anymore." Ash began to leave the room, and I couldn't help but follow him like some kind of dog.
"I give up. I'm going with you. You're Griff's little brother. I feel some kind of destiny. I'm going to have the head of the New York Tribune keep the data. You have no say in this. This is my way of doing things. I'll get to the bottom of this." Ash sighed.
♡⋆♡ 𝓮𝓷𝓭 ♡⋆♡
All of us sat around a coffee table drinking tea when Max's phone went off. Upon looking at who the call was from, he furrowed his eyebrows.
"Not picking it up?" Ibe asked.
"It's Jessica," he replied.
Ash smirked. "SHe probably wants consolation money."
"Shut up, you little punk," Max's tone changed once he answered the phone. "Yeah. Hey, Jessica." After a second, his face went from calm to agitated. "Who are you?" Once we heard Max's words, our eyes widened as we listened to the rest of the conversation.
"Jessica!" Max shouted. After the person on the other line said something, he said, "Micheal, are you there?" Suddenly, he stood up. "Wait! Touch them and I'll put a bullet through your brain!" The person hung up and Max dropped his arm to the side.
"Any arms here?" Ash asked.
"Just my father's shotgun," Yau-si answered.
"Go get it. The bullets, too." He left the room to retrieve the gun.
"Ash," Max said.
Ash looked to the side. "It seems like they won't let us go back to New York so easily." He loaded his revolver. "You guys stay here."
"Hell no," I objected.
"This is my thing. I'll give orders here."
"Pretty please?"
"No."
"Fine."
Ash started to whisper something to Shorter but I couldn't hear. 'Shorter'ly after, Ash began making his way to the door but Shorter called his name.
"Be careful."
"Yeah." Ash closed the door behind him and once he was far enough away, I walked down the hallway and jumped out of the window, following him.
━♡♥♡→ 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓴𝓲𝓹
Since I had followed him without thinking, I forgot that they would be driving and ran up to the car before they could go.
"Oh my God," Ash sighed, seeing me in the side mirror and poking his head out of the window.
"I told you to stay," he said.
"You're saying that like I'm a dog. Please let me come with. I'll literally hold onto the car and let myself get dragged on the floor."
"Don't blame me if shit goes wrong." He opened the door and moved to the side so that I could sit down, since there was no backseat.
Max had the shotgun over his shoulder and had a worried expression.
"Get a hold of yourself. They're depending on you." Ash said.
"Damn it. I'm going to kill them, damn it."
"That's more like it," I clapped my hands gently.
I started thinking about Shorter's strange behaviour: he wasn't his usual dumbass self, and when he called Ash's name, it seemed as though he was going to say something else, but something was stopping him. Maybe it was a love confession. That'd be cute. 'Ugh, I need to be serious.'
"Hey, why's Shorter being weird? Not as in weird like he is but he's not being weird so that makes it weird?" I asked, feeling too curious to keep the question to myself.
"I don't even know what you just said," Ash responded, keeping his eyes on the road.
"Shorter isn't the same as usual, do you know why?" I rephrased my confusing question.
"I noticed, too. I'm not sure why."
"You think it could be because of that Yau-si guy?"
"Why, do you think it could be?"
"Maybe."
"What do you mean 'maybe'?"
"I mean what I said," I copied Ash's words from earlier. "Kidding. Maybe is an adverb meaning a slight chance or possibility."
"Yeah, I know that. Why do you think that Yau-si could possibly be the cause?"
"I find it weird how it was as soon as we got to the house that something happened. It could be a coincidence, but there are far too many coincidences for me to believe that could be one too."
"I get what you mean."
Shortly after Ash and I's conversation, we arrived at our destination. At the front of the house where a police car was parked out front with the lights on. We all got out of the car and ran into the direction of the house.
"Jessicca, Micheal!" Max yelled.
"Hey, you can't..." A police officer tried to stop Max from entering the house, but once he saw Micheal, he ran inside to hug him. Ash and I watched from afar as he stood up while holding Micheal to look at Jessica, who was staring at him with a blanket wrapped around her and a serious expression.
I walked over to Micheal, holding my arms out.
"Come with me, Micheal. Give mommy and daddy a minute." Max placed Micheal in my arms and Ash and I walked out to the front yard.
"The swing," Ash pointed at a swing tied to a tree branch and I put Micheal down so that he could walk over to it and sit on it. Ash sat in front of him and I joined him.
"What happened?" he asked.
"They just came crashing in," Micheal explained. "Mommy tried to hide me in the kitchen and then they got mad. And then..." he started to cry at the memory and Ash brought him into a hug to comfort him.
"I'm sorry for making you remember all that," he said.
"It's okay now, you're safe and the police are here to protect you. Did your mom call them?" I queried.
"George did. He was on the phone with Mommy."
"So that's why they ran," Ash said. We were all standing up now and he was holding Micheal's hand, looking into the distance. "Were they white or black?"
"They weren't either," the young boy responded. Ash and I looked at each other in realisation. Perhaps we were right about Yau-si.
━♡♥♡→ 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓴𝓲𝓹
"Ash, why are we hurrying back?" Max asked.
"Chinatown sold us out." Max let out a 'Huh?'
"Y/N and I knew Yau-si was a spy."
"Yeah, but Shorter's with them. I'm sure he'll find a way to stop him."
"I damn hope so."
As soon as we got back to the expensive house, we ran through the door only to see Ibe laying on the floor. Eiji, Shorter and Yau-si weren't there.
"Shunichi! Are you okay?" Max asked, sitting his trembling figure up. "What happened? Where's Eiji and Shorter?"
"Damn it," Ash got up from crouching on the floor and began running to the door.
"Where are you going?!" Max demanded.
"Chinatown! Where else could they be?" He said, turning around. "Y/N, come!" Ash grabbed my wrist to pull me with him before Max called out to him again.
"Wait, Shunichi's trying to talk." We turned around
"Not...there..." Ibe could barely speak. Ash seemed to have known something, but I was still super confused.
━♡♥♡→ 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮𝓼𝓴𝓲𝓹
We had laid Ibe on the couch, and he was still clutching his chest and shaking.
"Take it easy, Shunichi," Max told him.
"New York..." he could only speak for a few seconds at once. "To Chinatown...To get Eiji back..."
Max looked at Ash. "Then it really was Shorter."
"Yau-si is behind all this shit, just as we suspected."
"I can't believe it. Shorter betrayed us?"
"I doubt it was of his own accord, but I don't know him like that," I thought out loud.
"He's Chinese, too," Ash said. "He must've suffered. I should've been more careful. He has a sister in New York."
"So that's how it is," Max said.
"So we have two enemies now."
"The more the merrier," I sighed.
"Wang-lung will pay for this." Suddenly, Ash turned around and pointed his gun at the staircase, making me flinch. "Who's there?! I know you're there. Come out. I'm in a really bad mood right now. Come out, or I'll kill you!"
"Wait, don't shoot," the person said, coming down the stairs. Ash followed his figure with his gun as an old man emerged in the doorway with his hands up.
"Who the fuck are you?" I asked.
"You tell me," The man said. "Breaking into my house like this."
"What did you say?" Max said.
Ash slightly relaxed his arm. "So you're..."
The man put his hands down. "I'm Alexis Dawson."
After we found out who the man was, he presented us with a syringe filled with a liquid.
"This antidote works on most muscle relaxants," he explained, injecting it into Ibe's arm. We all watched.
"Banana Fish..." Ash said. Alexis quickly turned his head to look at him. "You made it, didn't you?"
"Are you one of the guys with my younger brother, Abraham?"
"My brother was drugged by it in Iraq. He totally lost it and was shot dead by your brother!"
"What?"
Max stood up. "I was there when he was drugged. He was my best friend. We have the right to know."
Dawson looked at the floor, breaking any eye contact he had with us and staying silent.
"Hey," Ash grabbed him by his shirt and lifted him off of his knees. "I don't have time to sit around and chat."
Max looked at me expectantly. "Uh, cut..it out?" I said to Ash, patting his shoulder. I wasn't sure what Max was expecting me to do. Of course, Ash didn't care one bit about what I saw and continued to talk to Alexis.
"The guys your brother has joined up with have kidnapped my friend."
"Fine." Ash let go of him so that he could explain. "Come with me."
We followed Alexis back to the trashed office.
"Where have you been?" Max asked.
"Some strange men had been following me for the past few months. So I'd hidden away at a condo. But I got an alert that my computer was hacked. But that computer is a decoy. It only has what Abraham already knows."
Alexis pressed a button on one of the bookshelves and it was actually...a fucking secret door that slid open and revealed a hidden lab with many test tubes, books, and notes.
"I guess they overlooked it," Dawson said, turning on the light. Once the room was lit, it looked even bigger. "Ever since the day I created it, I was afraid something like this would happen. He sat down on a desk chair.
"So you made this room?" I inquired, looking around at all of the post-it notes.
"It all started twenty years ago. I'd just started out as a medical staff, and Abraham was a student. We came up with the idea to make money by making drugs. And we created 'it' by accident. The devil itself. A nightmare."
"Nightmare?"
"Drugs like LSDs induce hallucinations. If the user's mental state is unstable, it could cause a 'bad trip'. Banana Fish induces 'bad trips' into anyone who uses it. No human can escape from that nightmare. Fear, hatred...it amplifies all nervous emotions."
"But who'd buy a drug if it makes the user go crazy after one single use?" Ash asked.
"What would the military ever want it for?" Max added.
"That was all it does," Alexis continued. "It's only a bad hallucinogen. The problem is that it makes the user susceptible to external stimuli. Have you heard of drug hypnosis?"
"A type of hypnosis using drugs made by the former USSR," Max explained.
"It was made to force people into spying and assassinating. But I heard it wasn't reliable and couldn't be put to use."
"Banana Fish makes it one-hundred percent reliable. Give it to a person and tell him that immigrants are pests and should be killed, and he'll start killing immigrants."
"The hell..." all three of us muttered words of disbelief.
"Abraham was the first to realise that. Our friend tried the newly created drug and died. I got scared and disposed of the drug. But Abraham had hidden a stash. And in Iraq, he tested it on POWs and soldiers."
"He used them as lab rats?" Max had his eyebrows knitted together. "His fellow men..."
"Griff too," Alexis said. At the mention of Ash's brother's name, I noticed Ash grit his teeth before slamming Alexis onto the wall, gripping his suit tightly once more.
"All because of what you made, Griffin Skip, everyone else...Griffin was my only brother. He suffered endless nightmares..." He pushed Dawson to the side and wiped his tears. "But now I know what the old man is up to. He joined hands with your brother to make a deal with the US government."
"No way..." Max held his head in his hands.
"I realised what Abraham was doing and confiscated the drug. I was going to destroy it for good. But..."
"But what? You were too selfish to see how much harm it would cause?" I said. Alexis' excuses were piling up and they kept annoying me.
"I'm a scientist," he said. "I couldn't bring myself to destroy a new discovery."
Ash went to throw a punch at Dawson, but Max stopped him, taking a hold of his wrist.
"Let go of me! He deserves it."
"That's not it." Max walked close to Alexis. "Let me do it!" The strong punch of Max sent Alexis' glasses into the floor and Ibe caught him by his shoulders.
"Shunichi." Ibe smirked.
"This one's for Eiji." Ibe punched him in the face too, and they both fell to the floor.
"Dino Golzine's great conspiracy, huh. If the government backs him up, he'll be the top dog of the underworld," Max said.
Ash lifted his head. "Damn it."
"What's up?" I put a finger to my chin.
A bunch of Asian men stood in the doorway, one at the front wearing glasses and a necklace pointed a gun at us.
"I'm taking you all to New York," he said.
Ash laughed mockingly. "What a convoy."
"You watch your mouth, punk." He walked closer, wrapping the arm that held the gun over Ibe's shoulders.
"Shunichi!" Max called.
I huffed as one of the men tied my wrists together in front of me.
"Why are my hands behind my back and not them?" Ash asked. "I can't even take a piss."
The man with the gun lifted Ash's shirt to expose the gun tucked into his pants.
"Nice rod you got there," he said, grabbing hold of the gun before hitting Ash across the face with the gun that he was using to hold his shirt up.
"You punk." He kicked Ash onto the floor, making him cough.
"Take it easy, jeez! Are you trying to kill him?" I exclaimed.
"No, Mr. Golzine has claimed the right to do that." He turned to look at Max. "Hey Max. Your wife is pretty hot."
"So you're the one who..." Max went to lunge at him but was swiftly hit in the head with the man's gun.
"Max!" Ibe screamed.
Blood was running down one side of his face, and his voice shook as he told the man, "You'll pay for what you did to her."
He only chuckled in response. "Take them away."
"It sounds like you've been waiting all of your measly ass life to say that," I scoffed, and he looked at me with that assy grin.
"You could be using that mouth for better things than spewing insults."
"Like spitting in your face?" I glared at him his the sharpest eyes I could manage.
As they took us down the stairs, a large burst of bright yellow flames expanded behind us, coming closer with every step that we took. Once we were out of the house, the entire top floor had burst into flames, destroying all of the possible information that could've helped us. I could see the loss in Ash's eyes as he gazed at the house with his jaw agape.
♡⋆♡ 𝓮𝓷𝓭 ♡⋆♡